Greg and Dave-----
Greg, be glad you do what you do. The funeral business as we have always know it here in the US is morphing into a completely different critter. There are many reasons, too many to list here. Suffice it to say, five years from now it may very well be nationalized by the Government. The politicians and media love to manipulate the public with dreams of universal health care. But there is already an epidemic of "abandoned" bodies out there and it is going to get much worse. There will be national death care long before there will be national health care. The unclaimed bodies are already piling up and the municipalities no longer have the money to deal with it.
Dave, Jewish Halacha is very specific regarding care of the dead. ANY mutilation of the body is forbidden.
However, the combination of secular Jews and the desire to assimilate, and the growth of funeral service here in the US led to the birth of the Jewish Funeral Homes.
Prior to the 1880's in all Jewish communities, the Chevra Kadisha performed the ancient ritual of preparing the dead for an immediate funeral. This is still practiced in many communities, usually by members of a specific synagogue or regional service. It is also done this way in Israel where funeral homes are unheard of and crematories do not exist. (The religious consider cremation to be a violent act to both the body and the newly released soul.)
Anyway, the secular Jews, newly arrived in the US, were quick to demand the same rather ornate funerals the Gentiles were used to and the newly founded Jewish funeral directors were glad to accommodate.
Also, there was a HUGE Jewish population in the NE. So embalming came into favor just to keep the bodies from decomposing until burial.
Of course, the majority of Eastern European Jews were very poor and depended on their individuals societies to handle their traditional immediate burials.
The wealthy, however, wanted all the trappings , lots of flowers ( also forbidden by the religious) and it wasn't too long before they were having open casket visitations.
Because the Halacha required a casket to be made totally of wood (no metal no animal glue, not manufactured on the sabbath) the religious refused metal caskets.
But the secular regularly insisted on ornate metal caskets including copper and bronze!
Harry Houdini died in Detroit. His body was embalmed and placed in a solid bronze casket. There was a visitation in Detroit and then the body was transferred to the old Rothschild West End Chapel (Now the Plaza Community Jewish Chapel) on the upper west side of NYC where there was an open casket, tons of floral tributes, and a full Jewish funeral service.
The Riverside, a huge operation and landmark Jewish memorial chapel in NYC was built in the late 1920's and did so much volume for four decades it was not unusual for them to average over thirty funerals a day. The demographic has changed now, and the Riverside has slowed down a lot ( except during the recent Covid crises).
They used to employ a large crew of Jewish embalmers. So did all the other Jewish funeral homes except for the few very religious firms.
Beginning in the early 1980's a movement began to return to the basic traditional ways of burial and slowly over the years embalming has gone by the wayside. Even cremation amongst the secular continues to gain popularity, however, the religious would never cremate anyone.
In many ways, the same can be said for the gentile firms where cremations are now 80% or more.
It won't be long before you walk into an office in your neighborhood and chose " vanilla,chocolate,or strawberry" disposal of your loved ones body, by a Government run agency.
The few independent funeral homes that survive will be very exclusive and generally for the wealthy who can afford or demand high quality service, merchandise, and a beautiful chapel.
